


Parallel Roots

by rinskiroo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Damerey Week, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, It's not really shippy, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 20:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16311782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: Before Poe and Rey met on Crait, they found each other elsewhere.  A dream or a vision--neither quite understand it.For Damerey Week: First Meeting Re-imagined





	Parallel Roots

Despite the set sun, it’s still too warm to sleep.  Her skin crawls with dirt and sand. It sticks with irritation in the folds of her skin and in her scalp.  And her stomach rumbles angrily at again having barely enough food to fend off starvation. Rey tosses off the thin, shredded sheet in frustration and rocks in her sagging hammock.

The exhaustion in her bones finally wins and takes her consciousness to the place of fitful rest.

It’s the water again, come to greet her.  She’s never seen anything like it—a planet of only water.  She knows it’s a dream because such a thing isn’t possible. Though she’s heard story of all sorts of worlds out there in the galaxy, and there’s an old memory of grass and trees, she still doesn’t have it in her to believe it’s real.

The water is cool and refreshing and Rey enjoys the illusion of sinking beneath the surface and almost feeling clean.  She breaks back above the skin of the water and walks onto the hard rock of the small island—the only feature on the blue orb.  There are caves, and huts, and a hollowed out tree that stretches to the low hanging clouds, but they’re all empty. There’s a loneliness in this place that transcends beyond just being unoccupied.

Except this time.  Rey turns abruptly away from the stone steps leading back down and looks further into the shadows of the vacant tree—she hears moaning.

“Hello?”  her voice croaks out, sounding loud and harsh in this place where she’s only known silence.

There are no words, but the continued sounds of someone in pain.

She sees him—only just.  At least, she thinks it’s a man.  He’s standing near the center of the hollow tree near a beam of moonlight.  His head his bowed, chin nearly hitting his chest with dark curls dripping down over his face.  He stands… oddly. Like he’s leaning backwards with feet not quite planted on the ground.

Rey jumps back a step as he moans again and his head lolls to the side.  There’s a gash across his forehead and blood trickling down. She glances around and back behind her—they’re the only ones here.  But why? She’s never seen someone else in this dream.

She wants to wake up.

Rey presses her eyes shut and tries to shake herself back to reality.  Back to the still-too-warm walker and her uncomfortable hammock and sandy skin.

 

 

In all that time in the cockpit, all of those months spent chasing Terex and looking for Skywalker.  Following dead end leads, getting stabbed in the back, facing certain death with his squad over and over.  Poe never thought it would end like this. He was supposed be up there in the stars and never see the shot that finally took him out.  He’d die a hero’s death, not captured during a failed mission where the enemy ended up with the payload.

He never thought he’d die a traitor.

At first, it had been easy.  The physical pain, even the drugs—he’d handled all that with characteristic irreverence.  He was hoping they’d figure out he wasn’t worth the headache and space him. At least that would have been quick.  He realized they were just buttering him up for something worse, much worse. A sort of violation he could never have imagined.

Poe tried to hide away, like he’d done before, when the physical torture became too close to too much.  The place he would go was home. Yavin IV, the farmhouse his dad had built, and the tree growing in the yard.  The special tree with the glowing aura which grew in thirty years what most trees grow in a hundred. He’d sit under its canopy and breath in the clean, fresh air.  Feel the wet grass under his fingers and the hard bark at his back as he leaned against it.

But the monster never let him get that far.

The black mask had clawed into his mind and pried away every secret he’d ever kept.  Nothing was sacred or safe. The time he’d wet the bed at ten? Yeah, the monster had that one.  Snuck out and drank three beers at fourteen? That, too. Cheated on his Shyriiwook essay? Everyone had cheated in that class—it wasn’t really a secret.

Poe groans at the important bits of information the monster had stolen.  BB-8, the best companion a pilot could ask for, rolling around on the sands of Jakku alone, and with the map to Luke Skywalker.  Black Squadron. The Resistance. Leia. It’s all out there now in the clutches of the enemy.

He feels raw, inside and out.  And he knows it won’t be too much longer before they discard him.  Offer him up as leverage? Nah. Poe’s seen the sort of ships and weapons they have at their disposal now.  The Resistance doesn’t stand a chance. He’s not worth trading for anyway.

His head shifts to the side and he groans again as his muscles protest.  They’re stiff and sore from being in this contraption—not to mention the cracked rib and the splitting headache.

Poe realizes that this isn’t his tree.  The air is cool and lacks Yavin’s warmth and humidity.  This tree is old and there is dusty stone on the ground instead of grass.  The bark is grey and cracked, not dark brown and sturdy. But it _feels_ the same, or similar.  Like brothers (a much older brother), if trees had such things.  

His vision is fuzzy, but he thinks there’s a girl standing near the opening of—he’s now realized—this hollowed out tree.  Her hair is long and brown and dripping with water. She’s thin, but the sort of unhealthy, malnourished thin. And her eyes are pinched shut like she’s trying to block out something horrible.

Poe knows that feeling.

He tries to say something—like ‘hi’ or ‘help me,’ but it only comes out as another strangled moan.

 

 

One eyelid cracks open revealing a brown iris cautiously darting around.  She hopes to see the familiar surroundings of her solitary life, but still sees the grey bark walls, dusty rock floor, and the bloodied man decor.

Rey thinks someone should probably do something about that.  He looks like he’s in a right bit of pain. Another glance around and she’s still the only other person here.

Right, then.

She takes one cautious step forward, and then another.  All the way until she’s just an arm’s length away from the strange stranger.  Her head tilts to the side, trying to get a good look at him. His eyes are closed and Rey thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep, or passed out.  She wonders why he’s at such an awkward angle—tilted like he’s leaning up against something.

She hums quietly to herself as she thinks.  She knows that she’s asleep, back on Jakku. It stands to reason that, if he’s real, he’s likely somewhere else.  Is he lying on some reclining bed? Spacers are all a little odd.

 _That’s ridiculous._  She nearly scoffs at herself.   _This isn’t real.  He’s not real._

Nevertheless, when he coughs and grunts and his eyes start to wince open once more, Rey jumps back and pulls her arms up in front of her.  His head comes up slightly and he squints. He looks in pain, and perhaps a little confused.

“Who?”  he nearly manages to get a word out.

Rey shakes her head quickly.  “I’m no one.”

“Yavin?”  He ends the word on a high note of question, sounding almost hopeful.  Rey doesn’t understand what a gas giant on the other end of the galaxy has to do with anything.

“Jakku,”  she answers, because she doesn’t know what else to say.  Not that this place bears any resemblance to the desert planet.

His head falls back to the side and he moans again, seemingly disappointed with that answer.  That she understands. Rey can feel his despair, along with a heavy feeling of shame. Whoever he is, whatever has happened to him, Rey can’t help but mourn what he’s going through.  She wants to help, though she can’t fathom how.

Shoulders back, head up, she takes the two steps back towards him.  Real, dream, vision, whatever this is, she can’t just stand idle. Rey unwinds part of the cloth wrappings from her arm, still damp from the sea, and gingerly presses it into his head wound.  He flinches at the sting, but doesn’t move.

“Why are you standing like this?”  she asks quietly as she holds the cloth to his head.

His dark eyes glance to the side and then back at her.  Again, there’s that confused squint, but then he inexplicably grins.  “Just enjoying the accommodations.”

Rey doesn’t get it, and isn’t sure if she wants to.

“Why are you all wet?”  His diction has gotten better, but Rey wonders if she’s really hearing him with her ears, or something deeper inside her mind.

“Went for a swim.”  She matches his grin with a small one of her own.

He feels firm under her touch, and close.  Closer than this figment of her dream has any right to be.  He feels real, as if he’s right there next to her on Jakku. There’s something else she notices, standing this close to him.  There’s a wound greater than the one oozing blood on his forehead. It’s open and raw and somehow she knows it’s going to scar horribly.

Her fingers brush gently against his face as she tells him,  “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,”  he says, nearly snaps, and flinches away from her touch.

The now bloody rag falls to the ground between them and Rey apologizes again.

 

 

Why has she come here?  This waifish vision soaked in sea water.  Poe wonders just how much his brain is swelling inside his skull to conjure up some mer-creature from the ocean to tend to his wounds.

Her fingers are warm despite the chill of the air.  The salty rag stings on his cuts, but if feels nice and reassuring to have someone trying to help him.  Poe only wishes it was real because she’s cute and kind, and whatever this place is, it’s far away from the Star Destroyer he’s currently trapped on.

Poe swallows as she steps closer and stares curiously into his eyes.  It’s not so much that he finds her attractive and she’s standing awful close now.  Or that he’s still restrained, even if she seemingly doesn’t see it, and can’t do anything about this situation.  It’s _how_ she’s looking at him—like she’s seeing the trenches carved into his mind by the monster and finds them fascinating.  When her fingers dance across his forehead, all he can feel is those gloved digits reaching for him and flaying him open.

“Don’t!”  he bites out the word at her and jerks his head away as much as he can.

Poe thinks he hears her say something, an apology maybe, but it’s just whispers in the dark as the spell breaks and he’s back on the _Finalizer_.  With a tired gasp, his head lifts to see the same white-clad stormtrooper watching him.

“Sorry, I talk in my sleep,”  Poe tells him with a bloody grin.  The stormtrooper just stands there until the door slides upwards and the clamps around his arms and legs inexplicably release.

“Ren wants the prisoner,”  a second, new, stormtrooper says.

 _Here we go again,_ Poe says to himself and clenches his teeth, mentally preparing himself for more horrors.

Thankfully, it seems he hasn’t used up all of his good luck quite yet.

 _That’s it,_  Poe thinks as he lays in the baking sands of Jakku.   _That was the last of my luck._

For a few, high-flying minutes, he thought they’d had them beat.  The stormtrooper come to save him—Finn—crack shot, funny, great guy.  If he’s not dead yet, Poe knows the sun on this planet is going to kill them both.  And then, it doesn’t. One sideways miracle after another and Poe is home, in the arms of his father.

The old man can tell that something is different.  Poe can see the heartbreak on his face at having to nurse his son back to health after an ordeal he never should have been through.  There’s suspicion, too, that Poe isn’t telling him the whole story. Poe would rather bury that memory—forget it ever happened. Even if he uncovered it and tried to explain, he’s not sure how to find the words to detail just how intimate of a violation having your mind splayed open and picked through like an all-you-can-eat buffet is.

He tells his father he’s fine.  Just needs a day to rest and a few bacta patches to heal his cuts and bones.  His father is a good man with a stout heart, even though Poe can see it’s struggling.  He doesn’t pry and doesn’t try to get him to abandon this cause. He gets his son what he needs, and then leaves him alone with his thoughts.

Poe runs his fingers across the healthy, dark bark of the tree in the yard of his childhood home.  It’s warm under his touch, and not just from the glow of the Yavin star. It shimmers slightly with a light all its own.  Sometimes, Poe thinks he can feel a subtle hum coming from it. He wonders if this time it’s just the constant thrumming in his skull from the concussion and other unpleasantness, but there’s a vibration in the air and Poe can feel it strumming through his chest as he sits in the grass and relaxes against the tree.

 

 

The blue waves for as far as her eyes can see have been replaced by a sea of green.  It’s a verdant land with rounded tree tops and tall grasses growing underneath. Rey wonders if there are any planets out there that might have a mix of sand, water, and trees, instead of the single biome of Jakku or these worlds in her dreams.  She inhales deeply and lets the warm air fill her lungs. It’s different from Jakku’s heat—wetter, somehow. There are so many smells both new and wondrous. She’d grown accustomed to the salty smell of the oceanic planet and of course the dry sand of Jakku, but here it’s sweet and wet and... smokey, too?  Something’s cooking and a warmth settles in her chest. It feels like being wrapped in a blanket, or a hug.

 _Home_ , Rey thinks.  It feels like a home.

There’s a sigh that startles her away from the comfort of the moment.  She unwraps her arms from around herself as she gazes around and realizes she’s not just anywhere on this foreign, green planet.  There’s a large tree, similar in shape and ambiance to the tree she’s known on the water planet. Except it’s younger, much younger.  And vibrantly living.

Leaning up against the tree—sitting this time and not awkwardly pseudo-standing—is the same man from before.  He looks cleaned up and not actively in danger of dying, but tired. A sort of world-weariness that slumps his shoulders and weighs on his limbs.

Rey takes one step closer, then another when he doesn’t react.  She wonders if he’s sleeping, too. Rey’s asleep, somewhere off in space, curled up in the bunk of the ship she and her new friend stole from Plutt.  She wonders where he is, if he’s on a ship somewhere. If he’s escaped his captors, or if they’ve transferred him from the device he was strapped to into a detention cell.

Something crunches and pops under her foot that causes the man to look up.  He blinks tired eyes at her, then looks down at her feet before looking back up at her.  The corner of his lip quirks slightly, probably inwardly laughing at what must be a very perturbed expression on her face.

“Snails,”  he says, with a bit of humor in his voice.  “They’re all over the place after it rains. Can’t go anywhere without _cronch cronch cronch_.”

Rey winces at the sound he makes, which is an accurate recreation of the one her foot just made.  She’s not entirely sure what a snail is, but has the feeling it used to be alive until she squashed it.  She rubs her shoe on the grass and takes her next steps very carefully.

“What is this place?”  she asks, her voice quiet, almost reverent.

“Yavin,”  he replies.  His voice is proud, and he smiles when he says it.

“This is your home?”  Though she phrases it like a question, Rey already knows the answer.  The feelings that she has about this place, the familiar smells and almost-memories—they’re all from him.

He nods and the silence hangs between them for a moment until he asks,  “Why are you here?”

“I’m not,”  she responds quickly.

He nods again, like he almost understands.  “Back on the planet with the ocean and the dead tree.”

Rey shakes her head.

“Jakku?”

A pang of guilt shoots through her chest.  She’s been gone too long now. She was supposed to stay put.  Stay and wait. Rey’s not supposed to leave, no matter how much she wants to.  “I’m on a ship,” she tells him. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on a ship before.”

“Do you like it?”  A smile stretches across his face that makes her want to smile in response.

Rey can’t help the way it involuntarily tugs the corners of her lips upwards.  Despite the danger, flying the _Falcon_ , outrunning the First Order, it was the most fun she’d had.  Ever. And now to see the stars— No, she had to go back to Jakku.

He frowns at her and sighs again as he adjusts his posture against the tree, shoulders settling back.  Maybe he’s disappointed in her responses, or it’s the heavy weight she feels settling further on his shoulders.  Though he looks to be out of immediate danger here, she knows this isn’t his last stop.

“Are you safe now?”  she asks. “You were in a bad way the last time.”

Eyes still closed, he smirks slightly.  “None of us are safe, sundrop.”

Rey scrunches up her nose and wonders about what sort of drops a sun would have, and tries not to think about the dark truth of his words.  She’s not safe. The First Order won’t stop until they find BB-8. And even then, they’ll likely kill both her and Finn to tie up loose ends.  She takes a few more steps towards him, mainly because she’s scared and the familiar presence of the tree is comforting.

“I lost something,”  he says quietly as she stands next to him.

“Have you tried retracing your steps?”

When he sighs heavily, Rey realizes he doesn’t mean misplaced.  “I was lost,” she tells him after a quiet moment. “Sometimes, lost things have to find their own way.”

He peers up at her, a mix of confusion and consideration in his features.  Not pity, Rey notices, and appreciates. A device on his wrist beeps suddenly.  It startles them both and the spell is broken. Rey is back in the dimly lit, musty-smelling cabin, and the memory of the man drifts away from her dream-addled subconscious.

 

 

Poe only closes his eyes for a minute.  He doesn’t want to—he has to keep going, keep running, can’t stop or the First Order will be on top of them.  There’s a terrible plan in the works, and Poe’s losing hope that it even stands half a chance. Finn and Rose won’t be back in time, and then it’s the inevitable.

Poe’s sure he’s caught an hour or two of sleep in the cockpit at the very least, but it’s been one flight against death to the next.  He feels like he’s been awake since leaving Yavin and can’t keep his eyes open anymore.

It feels like ages since he’s been here, though it’s only been a few days, maybe even less.  The great, dead hollow tree on the ocean planet reaches up into the sky in front of him at the top of wobbly stone steps.  As he looks up at the grey bark, he wonders how many of these trees there might be out in the galaxy. His mother told him that the tree in their yard was one of two and he thought that meant the last two.  She must have meant living, for this one is certainly long since void of life, even if some remnant still lingers.

Something else lingers here—the woman that the trees, the Force, are somehow connecting him to.  He steps in quietly, trying not to startle her. She’s got her back turned to him and her fingers are dancing lightly across a stone shelf tucked into the bark.

“I didn’t think it was real,”  she says quietly, like she’s afraid if it's any louder she’ll betray too much emotion.

Poe glances around again.  All of these odd encounters have felt too real to be dreams, but he knows that they are.  Unconscious on the _Finalizer_ , asleep under the tree back on Yavin, and now—he knows he’s passed out somewhere on the _Raddus_.  He doesn’t have the heart to tell her, though.  How silly, he thinks, that he doesn’t want to upset the figment of his dreams.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”  she asks. Her hands move to rub at her face, but she still hasn’t turned towards him.

“Yeah.  Found his way back to me.”

“I’m glad,”  she says, but when she finally turns to face him, Poe doesn’t think she looks very glad.  Her lips try curl into a slight smile, but her skin is pale and her eyes are red. There’s something different about her now.  Something raw and broken, but in a way that Poe thinks he recognizes.

“Are you okay?”  he asks as he steps further into the cave of the tree.

She glances at the floor and her shoulders shrug.  There’s a small laugh that’s trying to cover up just how bad it must be.  “This hasn’t gone how I thought it would. I feel like I don’t know what to do next.  And I don’t know if I should be disappointed, or relieved.”

He’s close enough now to reach out and touch her.  He does so, with a tentative hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay to be both.”

“And overwhelmed, and terrified, and also excited and curious.”  She lifts her head and looks at him finally. Poe expects he might see tears, but she’s kept them at bay.  She’s tired, but somewhere in those brown eyes is a spark of someone who wants to keep reaching even though she’s on the edge of giving up.

“You got this,”  he tells her with an encouraging smile.  Though he’s not sure what it is she’s doing, or anything about her.  In the end, this could all be simply just a dream. But there’s a flare of something in his chest that’s trying to convince him that his battered psyche didn’t conjure her up to keep him from quitting.  Poe hopes she’s real. And he hopes she conquers whatever it is that’s putting that weary look on her face.

“You, too,”  she says, returning his smile with a small one of her own.

Poe’s not sure, but he thinks she doesn’t mean it in a reflexive manner.  Maybe he’s wearing his weariness just as openly, or this strange connection goes farther than he wants to think about.

It gives him a bit more hope that maybe there’s a chance.  Maybe he’ll have this dream again after they’ve escaped the First Order and he can to ask her for a comm channel or a location.  Maybe she’s real. Maybe there’s a tomorrow.

“I’m Rey,”  she says, after it’s all come together.

Poe smiles.  “I know.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I don't believe you / Soul Mates](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17884769) by [rinskiroo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo)




End file.
